(Reuters) – Australia’s Woodside Petroleum on Thursday reported a 67% increase in sales revenue for the second quarter, helped by higher realised prices for natural gas and oil as global demand recovers.
The country’s top independent gas producer also said it has begun the sell-down process of up to 49% of Train 2 in the Pluto LNG plant, and was looking to cut its stake in Scarborough, Woodside’s only big growth project in the near term.
Woodside said it continues to review the escalating costs of the Scarborough and Pluto expansion project, which were previously pegged at $11.4 billion. A final investment decision for those projects is slated for later this year.
The average realised price that Woodside got for its products was $46 per barrel of oil equivalent (boe) in the June quarter, up $2 from the first three months of the year, and higher than $28 last year.
Realised oil prices shot up to $75 per boe, more than double the $31 last year.
The recovery helped sales revenue hit $1.29 billion in the three months to June 30, up from $768 million a year ago.
However, output was hit by bad weather and maintenance activity. The company produced 22.7 million barrels of oil equivalent (mmboe) in the quarter, slightly lower than the 25.9 mmboe a year ago.
(Reporting by Soumyajit Saha and Nikhil Kurian Nainan in Bengaluru; Editing by Devika Syamnath)
